A Nervous Breakdown Read online

  ‘Science and the arts won’t be any help here,’ Vasilyev thought. ‘The only way is by “spreading the word”.’

  And he began to imagine himself standing next evening on a street corner, asking every passer-by, ‘Where are you going and why? Why don’t you fear God?’

  He would address apathetic cabmen: ‘Why are you hanging about here? Why don’t you protest, show your indignation? Surely you believe in God and know that it’s a sin for which people go to hell? So why can’t you speak up? I know they’re strangers to you, but please understand that they have fathers, brothers just like you … yes!’

  Once, a friend of Vasilyev’s had said that he was a gifted man. People are usually gifted in literature, drama, the fine arts, but his special gift was for human beings. He was keenly, marvellously sensitive to all forms of pain. Just as a good actor reflects the movements and voices of others, so Vasilyev could reflect another’s pain in his soul. He would weep at the sight of tears. Among the sick, he himself became ill and would groan. If he saw an act of violence he would feel that he was the victim, would behave cowardly, like a child, and run off panic-stricken. Other people’s pain irritated and stimulated him, reduced him to ecstasy, and so on.

  I don’t know whether this friend was right, but when Vasilyev thought that he had solved his problem his mood became inspired. He wept, laughed, spoke out loud the words he was going to say the next day and felt an intense love for those who would accept his teaching and join him on the street corner to spread the word. He sat down to write letters and made vows …

  All this was like inspiration in that it was short-lived – Vasilyev soon became tired. The very weight of numbers of those prostitutes from London, Hamburg, Warsaw pressed down on him as mountains press down on the earth, and made him quail and panic. He remembered that he had no gift for words, that he was cowardly and faint-hearted, that apathetic people would hardly want to listen to him, a timid, insignificant third-year law student, and that true evangelism involves actions as well as sermons.

  When it was light and carriages were already clattering down the street, Vasilyev lay motionless on his couch, vacantly staring. No longer was he thinking about women, or men, or spreading the word. His entire attention was riveted on the mental anguish that was tormenting him. It was a dull, abstract, vague kind of pain, rather like a feeling of hopelessness, despair and the most terrible fear. He could point it out – it was in his chest, below the heart. But he knew of nothing with which he could compare it. In his life he had suffered severe toothache, pleurisy and neuralgia, but all that was nothing compared with this spiritual pain. With that kind of pain, life was repellent. The dissertation, the fine work he had written, the people he loved, the rescue of fallen women, together with the memory of all that he had loved or had been indifferent to only yesterday, irritated him now as much as the clatter of carriages, the scurrying of servants, the daylight. If someone were to perform some great deed of mercy or dreadful act of violence before him at that moment, both would have equally revolted him. Of all the thoughts lazily drifting through his mind only two did not irritate him: one was that he had the power to kill himself at any moment and the other – that the pain would not last more than three days. The latter he knew from experience.

  After lying down for a while he stood up, wrung his hands and stopped pacing the room from corner to corner, moving in a square, along the walls, instead. He looked at himself in the mirror. His face was pale and hollow-cheeked, his temples were sunken, his eyes had become bigger, darker and less mobile, as if they belonged to a stranger, and they expressed unbearable mental suffering.

  At noon the art student knocked at the door.

  ‘Grigory, are you in?’ he asked.

  Not receiving any reply he stood there for a moment, pondered and then answered himself in Ukrainian dialect,

  ‘Ain’t no one thar. ’E’s darned well gone off to that looniversity, blast ’im!’

  And he went away. Vasilyev lay down on his bed, covered his head with the pillow and started crying out with pain. The more abundantly the tears flowed the worse his mental anguish became. When it grew dark he thought of the night of torment that awaited him and he was overwhelmed by the most dreadful despair. Quickly, he dressed, ran from his room, leaving the door wide open and, without aim or reason, went out into the street. Without asking himself where he was going he swiftly went down Sadovy Street.

  It was snowing as heavily as yesterday, but the snow was thawing. With his hands in his sleeves, shivering and starting at the clatter, the bells of horse-trams, and passers-by, Vasilyev walked down Sadovy Street as far as the Sukharev Tower, then to the Red Gate, where he turned off into Basmanny Street. He went into a tavern and drank a large vodka, but this did not make him feel any better. After reaching Razgulyay, he turned right and strode down side-streets where he had never been before. He reached the old bridge where the River Yauza roars past and from where one can see the long rows of lights in the windows of the Red Barracks. To relieve his mental torment with some new sensation or other kind of pain, and not knowing the best way to go about this, Vasilyev unbuttoned his overcoat and frock-coat, weeping and trembling, and bared his chest to the sleet and wind. But that brought no relief either. Then he bent over the railing on the bridge, looked down at the black, turbulent Yauza and felt a strong urge to throw himself in, head first – not from disgust with life, not to commit suicide, but to replace one pain with another, even if it meant being broken to pieces. But the black water, the darkness, the desolate snowy banks terrified him. He shuddered and moved on. After passing the Red Barracks he returned, went down into a small wood and then came out on to the bridge again.

  ‘No, I’m going home! Home!’ he thought. ‘It will be better there.’ And home he went. Once there he tore his wet overcoat and cap off and started pacing along the walls, never tiring. He kept this up until morning.

  VII

  When the artist and the medical student called next morning, he was dashing around the room groaning with pain. His shirt was torn and his hands bitten.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ he sobbed when he saw his friends. ‘Take me where you like, do what you want, but hurry up, save me, for God’s sake! I shall kill myself!’

  The art student was very taken aback and turned pale. The medical student too was close to tears, but remembering that doctors had to keep calm and collected in all eventualities, said coldly, ‘You’re having a nervous breakdown. But don’t worry, we’ll go to a doctor’s right away.’

  ‘Wherever you like, only quickly, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Now don’t get excited. You must take a grip on yourself.’

  With trembling hands the art student and medical student dressed Vasilyev and led him out into the street. On the way the medical student told him, ‘Mikhail Sergeyevich has been wanting to meet you for ages. He’s very nice and knows his stuff. Although he only graduated in 1882 he has a huge practice already. He’s very matey with students.’

  ‘Get a move on, hurry!’ Vasilyev said.

  Mikhail Sergeyevich, a stout, fair-haired doctor, greeted the friends solemnly, with an icy civility, and he smiled on only one side of his face.

  ‘Mayer and the art student have told me about your illness,’ he said. ‘Very glad to be of service. Well, now, please sit down.’

  He made Vasilyev sit in a large armchair near the table and moved a box of cigarettes over to him.

  ‘Well, now,’ he began, smoothing the knees of his trousers. ‘Let’s get down to business. How old are you?’

  He began to ask questions, which the medical student answered. He asked if Vasilyev’s father had ever suffered from any particular illness, if he was a hard drinker, if he was unusually cruel or had any other peculiarities. He asked precisely the same questions about his grandfather, mother, sisters and brothers. When he learned that his mother had an excellent voice and had sometimes been on the stage, he suddenly livened up and asked, ‘Forgive me, but can you rem
ember if the stage was an obsession with your mother?’

  Twenty minutes passed. Vasilyev grew bored with the doctor smoothing his knees and harping on the same thing.

  ‘As far as I can tell from your questions, Doctor,’ he said, ‘you want to know if my illness is hereditary or not. It is not.’

  The doctor went on to ask if Vasilyev had had any secret vices at all in his childhood, whether there had been head injuries, strong enthusiasms, idiosyncrasies, obsessions. It’s possible to avoid giving answers to half the questions posed by diligent doctors without endangering one’s health in the slightest, but Mikhail Sergeyevich, the medical student and the art student all wore expressions that seemed to say: if Vasilyev fails to answer just one question, then all is lost. For some reason the doctor wrote down the answers on a piece of paper. When he learned that Vasilyev had graduated from the Natural Sciences Faculty and was now a student in the Faculty of Law, the doctor became very pensive.

  ‘Last year he wrote a first-class dissertation,’ the medical student said.

  ‘I’m sorry, but please don’t interrupt. I can’t concentrate,’ the doctor said, smiling on one side of his face. ‘Yes, of course, that has a part to play in the case history. Intense mental effort, over-tiredness … Yes, yes. And do you drink vodka?’ he asked, turning to Vasilyev.

  Another twenty minutes passed. In a low voice, the medical student began expounding his theory as to the immediate cause of the attack and then told him that he, the art student and Vasilyev had gone to S—Street the day before yesterday.

  The indifferent, restrained, offhand tone in which his friends and the doctor spoke about women and that miserable side-street struck Vasilyev as most strange.

  ‘Please tell me one thing, Doctor,’ he said, trying not to appear rude. ‘Is prostitution an evil or isn’t it?’

  ‘My dear fellow, who’s disputing it?’ the doctor said, his expression seeming to say that he had long ago solved all these problems. ‘Who’s disputing it?’

  ‘Are you a psychiatrist?’ Vasilyev asked rudely.

  ‘Yes, I’m a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re all right!’ Vasilyev said, rising to his feet and starting to pace the room. ‘You could well be! But I find it really amazing! The fact that I’ve studied in two faculties is considered a great achievement. I’m praised to the skies for writing a dissertation that will be ignored and forgotten in three years’ time. But because I can’t discuss fallen women as nonchalantly as I might talk about these chairs, I’m given medical treatment, called insane and pitied!’

  Vasilyev somehow felt dreadfully sorry for himself, his friends, for all those he had seen the day before yesterday, and for the doctor. He burst into tears and fell back into the armchair.

  His friends gave the doctor an inquiring look. His expression suggesting that he considered himself a specialist in this field, the doctor went over to Vasilyev and, without speaking to him, gave him some drops to drink. Then, when he had calmed down, he made him undress and started testing the sensitivity of his skin, his knee reflexes, and so on.

  Vasilyev felt better. When he left the doctor’s he felt ashamed of himself. The clatter of carriages no longer irritated him and the heavy weight beneath his heart grew lighter and lighter, just as if it were melting away. He held two prescriptions: one for potassium bromide, the other for morphia. He had taken all that kind of thing before!

  He stood in the street and pondered for a moment. Saying goodbye to his friends he lazily trudged along to the university.

  The Black Monk

  I

  Andrey Vasilich Kovrin, MA, was exhausted, his nerves were shattered. He did not take any medical treatment but mentioned his condition in passing to a doctor friend over a bottle of wine, and was advised to spend the spring and summer in the country. And as it happened he received just then a long letter from Tanya Pesotskaya, inviting him to come and stay at Borisovka. So he decided he really must get away.

  At first – this was in April – he went to his own estate, Kovrinka, where he lived on his own for three weeks. Then after waiting until the roads were passable, he drove off in a carriage to see his former guardian and mentor Pesotsky the horticulturalist, who was famous throughout Russia. It was no more than about fifty miles from Kovrinka to Pesotsky’s place at Borisovka and it was pure joy travelling along the soft road in spring, in a comfortable sprung carriage.

  Pesotsky’s house was huge, with columns, peeling plaster lions, and a footman in coat and tails at the entrance. The gloomy, severe, old-fashioned park was strictly laid out in the landscaped English style, stretched almost half a mile from the house to the river, and ended in a precipitous clayey bank where pines grew, their exposed roots resembling shaggy paws. Down below, the water glinted uninvitingly, sandpipers flew past squeaking plaintively, and it was generally the kind of place to make you want to sit down and write a ballad. But near the house itself, in the courtyard and the orchard, which took up about eighty acres, including the nursery beds, it was cheerful and lively, even in bad weather. Nowhere, except at Pesotsky’s, had Kovrin seen such wonderful roses, lilies, camellias, so many different tulips, with colours ranging from white to soot-black, such a profusion of flowers. It was only the beginning of spring and the real splendours of the flowerbeds were still hidden in the hothouses. But the flowers in bloom along the paths – and here and there in the beds – were enough to make you feel that you were in the very kingdom of tender hues as you strolled in the garden, especially early in the morning, when dew sparkled on every petal.

  The ornamental section of the garden, which Pesotsky disparagingly called ‘sheer nonsense’, had seemed like a fairyland to Kovrin as a child. The oddities, elaborate monstrosities and travesties of nature that were to be seen here! There were trellised fruit trees, a pear tree shaped like a Lombardy poplar, globe-shaped oaks and limes, an apple tree umbrella, arches, initials, candelabra, and even an ‘1862’ made from plums – this was the year Pesotsky first took up horticulture. Here also were fine, graceful saplings with straight, firm stems like palm trees, and only after a very close look could you tell that they were gooseberries or blackcurrants. But what most of all made the garden a cheerful, lively place was the constant activity. From dawn to dusk gardeners with wheelbarrows, hoes and watering-cans swarmed like ants near the trees and bushes, on the paths and flowerbeds.

  Kovrin arrived at the Pesotskys’ after nine in the evening. He found Tanya and her father Yegor Semyonych in a terribly worried state. The clear, starry sky and the thermometer foretold frost towards morning, but the head gardener Ivan Karlych had gone off to town and there was no one left they could rely on.

  During supper, they talked only of this morning frost and decided that Tanya would not go to bed, but would go round the orchard after midnight to check if everything was all right, while Yegor Semyonych would get up at three, even earlier perhaps. Kovrin sat with Tanya the whole evening and after midnight went with her into the garden. It was cold and there was a strong smell of burning. In the big orchard, called ‘commercial’ as it brought Yegor Semyonych several thousand roubles profit every year, a dense, black, acrid smoke was spreading over the ground and enveloping the trees, saving all those thousands from the frost. Here the trees were planted like draughts pieces, in straight, even rows, like columns of soldiers. This strict, pedantic regularity, plus the fact that all the trees were exactly the same height, all of them having absolutely identical crowns and trunks, made a monotonous, even boring picture. Kovrin and Tanya walked between the rows, where bonfires of manure, straw and all kind of refuse were smouldering, and every now and then they met workers drifting through the smoke like shadows. Only cherries, plums and certain varieties of apple were in bloom, but the whole orchard was drowning in smoke. Kovrin breathed a deep breath only when they reached the nurseries.

  ‘When I was a child the smoke used to make me sneeze,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘but I still don’t understand why this smoke
saves the plants from frost.’

  ‘Smoke is a substitute for clouds when the sky is clear …’ Tanya said.

  ‘But what use are they?’

  ‘You don’t normally get a frost when it’s dull and overcast.’

  ‘That’s right!’

  He laughed and took her arm. Her broad, very serious face, chill from the cold, with its fine black eyebrows, the raised coat collar which cramped her movements, her whole slim, graceful body, her dress tucked up from the dew – all this moved him deeply.

  ‘Heavens, how you’ve grown up!’ he said. ‘Last time I left here, five years ago, you were still a child. You were so thin, long-legged, bareheaded, with that short little dress you used to wear. And I teased you and called you a heron … How time changes everything!’

  ‘Yes, five years!’ Tanya sighed. ‘A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then. Tell me, Andrey, in all honesty,’ she said in an animated voice, peering into his face, ‘have you grown tired of us? But why am I asking you this? You’re a man, you live your own interesting life, you’re an eminent person … Becoming like strangers to each other is really so natural! Anyway, Andrey, I want you to treat us as your family, we have a right to that.’

  ‘But I do, Tanya.’

  ‘Word of honour?’

  ‘Yes, word of honour.’

  ‘You were surprised before that we had so many of your photos. You must know Father idolizes you. At times I think he loves you more than me. He’s proud of you. You are a scholar, a remarkable person, you’ve made a dazzling career for yourself and he’s convinced this is because he brought you up. I let him think this, I don’t see why I should stop him.’

  Dawn was breaking – this was particularly evident from the clarity with which puffs of smoke and the tree tops were outlined now in the air. Nightingales were singing and the cries of quails came from the fields.